The Aged Warrior
by Zanzetkuken
Summary: Time was the one enemy the Courier could never overcome. With a measly four years left of life in his body, death will soon come for him. However a lot can happen in four years. With the arrival of a Big MT Transportalponder Test Probe thought lost via its remote return unit, these last years of the Courier's life will prove themselves to be quite eventful indeed.
1. Chapter 1

_War. War never changes._

 _The methods by which war was waged have changed over the course of human history, but it was always waged for the same reasons. Whether for religion, freedom, anger, land, surivival, fear, or some other reason, the reasons behind war were_

 _never new. While the reasons for the Great War in 2077 were lost, one of these factors pushed the world over the edge and brought about the Nuclear Holocaust that wiped the Earth of most of its life._

 _However, the species of Earth are both resilient and stubborn. From the ashes of the destruction, new species began to emerge from pre-war equivalents. The Yao Guai, Radscopions, and Deathclaws being among the many that threatened the_

 _remnants of humanity. Humanity itself split into large numbers of different species, each attempting to adapt to the world they now found themselves. However, despite the vast changes, there were several patterns._

 _Governments began to rise from the ashes of the old world, many bringing back ideals from the old world. Not always were these from the same point. Twenty-nine years ago, the Second Battle of the Hoover Dam occured between several_

 _factions, each holding a thought from the old world. When the dust cleared, the New California Republic was the victorious survivor. Most were able to trace this back to the actions of a single man, Mojave Delivery Service Courier Six._

 _This lone warrior had shaped the Wasteland in the days leading up to the conflict by assassinating major leaders, gathering allies, and even launching lost nuclear weapons to annihilate the power base of one of the foes of the side he had chosen._

 _After his contributions, he was given the status of one of the NCR's rangers and served intermittedly for twenty-seven years. At the end of his service, the man simply disappeared from the wastelands. No one is clear what precisely what happened, with exception to a select few._

 _These individuals were the members of the Think Tank of the Big MT facility. The Courier had been brought back by an emergency function on the Transportalponder that activated when his reinforced heart had failed during a fight against a set of_

 _Deathclaws. The lobotomites had taken him to the Auto-Doc and had the organ replaced, but when revived, the Courier decided not to return to the Rangers and to remain at the Big MT._

 _However, despite his effective retirement, there was still one final trip for this aged warrior to undertake..._

* * *

The Courier awoke within the Big MT facility late in the day. In prior years he could be found at the facility, he would have been awake long ago, possibly not having actually fallen asleep the previous day. Now, all of the wounds that he had suffered through the long years had brought him to the current state of suffering jolts of pain across his entire body as he rose from the bed. It settled into a dull throbbing as he staggered over to the Sink Auto-Doc and had it run a diagnostic of his body.

It applied some Med-X for the pain after it finished and reported upon his current health in an upload to his Pipboy. A short run through of the results showed nothing really had changed drastically from the prior check. ' _Still a bit over 4 years left_ ,' the Courier thought as he looked over his life expectancy. ' _Might wind up making it past fifty if that holds out a bit longer._ '

Out of the corner of his eye, the Courier caught a glance of himself in a mirror and thought he noticed something. As he went over to the mirror to double check, he gave a passing glance at the scars from the twin bullets that obliterated his memory and the massive scars that crossed the entirety of the right side of his face from his fight with Rawr. That particular blow during that fight that had cost him his right eye until he had gotten it replaced with replaced by the Sink Auto-Doc with what was basically a camera in his eye socket that was rigged to feed information to his brain. That was not the only thing he had lost during that fight, his right forearm had been removed when a reflexive attempt to block had been sheared away by the force of the blow from the deathclaw. After a very narrow victory and having found his original forearm crushed, the Courier had removed the right forelimb of the deathclaw and attempted to attach it as a replacement. It somewhat worked, the abuse of Stimpaks to force the connection managed to provide him enough dexterity to survive to the point where he got back into range to have the Sink Auto-Doc grant full functionality and not be killing him from its demands. He did have to go through quite a bit of effort to effectively use guns with his left hands, though.

Shaking the rambling thoughts away, the Courier checked over his appearance for what he had thought he had seen. 'Yep,' the Courier thought as he looked over his hair. 'Gray hairs are finally starting to overtake the black.'

Turning away from the mirror, he continued on towards where he stored his armor and weapons. From the store, he grabbed the outfit collectively referred to as the Courier's Duster, the two-headed bear worn down with time, but still partially evident. He holstered Lil' Devil on his left hip out of habit and headed down to the Think Tank. For some reason, they had asked to speak with him about something of great importance. Considering the prior things they had referred to as being of great importance, he was a bit skeptical about their claim, until his own brain had also stated that there was actual importance this time.

Wasting no time, the Courier spoke as he entered, "So what is this item of great importance you wanted me to know about?"

"AH, COURIER, YOU HAVE ARRIVED," Dr. Klein spoke up, the rest of the Think Tank working on some problem or another. Despite every effort he had made over the years, he had proven unable to fix the volume control on Dr. Klein's think tank.

In fact, the Courier half believed that the volume actually increased. He pushed aside continued thoughts on the topic as Dr. Klein continued. "AS FOR WHAT IT IS, I BELIEVE YOU WILL FIND THE TOPIC TO BE VERY INTERESTING."

"What precisely is it?" the Courier responded.

"ONE OF THE MANY PROBES WE SENT OUT AN EARLY ATTEMPT AT THE TRANSPORTALPONDER HAS RETURNED FROM ITS DESTINATION THROUGH USE OF ITS EMERGENCY RETURN TRANSPORTALPONDER."

"Thus far, I do not entirely see the precise reason why you would need to bring me down here to inform me of this," the Courier responded. "Unless there is something more to this, I don't see why you couldn't have just told me this through the Pipboy."

"Simple," a nearby eyebot spoke. "The transmitter was not captured by any of the satellites accessible from Big MT before it had returned."

The Courier faced the eyebot that contained either his robotic brain or organic brain. After a short period where they swapped out repeatedly, neither him nor Six knew which copy of the brain either one had. Really did wonders for the temporary identity crisis that had worked through both of them for a time. He pushed away these thoughts as well, responding with, "You want me to go through and find out where exactly it ended up."

"PRECISELY," interjected Dr. Klein.

"Do you have a way for me to get back?"

"Right here," responded Six, guiding the Courier over to a terminal, Klein moving over to one of his projects as they left. Sitting upon it was a pistol that held an appearance of being a crossbreed between the standard Laser Pistol and the Big Mountain Transportalponder.

"Tad on the bulkier side," the Courier commented, picking up the device and inspecting it.

"Beyond the slighly larger mechanism, I had made sure it was highly durable and had an adequately large power source. Don't want to lose contact due to the universe deciding to act as it usually does when life gets exciting," the eyebot responded.

"How's the location data set?" the Courier questioned.

"The prior location the Transportalponder was fired off from is stored in a heavily shielded data storage," Six replied.

"Differences in design from the regular version of the Transportalponder?"

"Larger, higher durability components and greater power supply."

"Manage to get any information off the probe?"

"Two primary items. First, the passage of time was identical, so if the possibility it proves to be a separate reality things we will not have to deal with the trouble of synchronizing between realities. The soil that was located upon the probe had concentrations of a unknown substance that is still being analyzed, but has proven to be inert in the areas we have thus far tested it under," Six detailed. "Hasn't proven to deal any damage to biological structures or common materials."

'Really says something about MT tech if the first focus is on the possibility of another reality,' The Courier thought as he took the information in and finished his inspection. "I'll be back in three months."

As the Courier turned away and headed towards the Sink to gather his supplies for the journey, he heard Six 'shout' to him, "If you run across any civilization, at least try to keep as low a profile as you can. I'd rather not hear you obliterated the first civilization you came across."

The Courier grabbed an old duffel bag he had picked up a fair distance in the past as he entered the Sink. He changed over to his Elite Riot Gear armor and tossed the Courier's Duster into the bag. If he landed in an inhabited area, then his appearance may not garner the best of attention, but wilderness was a far more likely scenario. Besides the duster, he also tossed in the US Army General Outfit he had found within the Divide, as well as an old trenchcoat and hat that reminded him of the Mysterious Stranger he had seen from time to time during his travels. All had been partially modified to allow his deathclaw arm to be able to fit through them with only a minor degree of difficulty.

His next consideration was of which weapons to equip himself with. For the pistols, he kept the Lil' Devil and equipped his modified Sequoia. There were two changes from the standard that applied to his weapon. First, it's grip and trigger were both rebuilt to allow for his deathclaw arm to fire the weapon. The increased weight of the weapon from the prior modification and a couple other additions to rebalance the weapon, as well as the durability provided by the Deathclaw forearm, allowed for the second modification, upscaling to use .50MG ammunition. The recoil from the weapon was not totally abated, causing the Courier to suffer from a measure of damage each time he fired the gun, which limited his use of it. As the primary use of the weapon was for intimidation and emergencies, this was not too concerning of an effect.

The other weapons he grabbed for the journey were his 12.7mm SMG he bought from the Gun Runners, a Survivalist's Rifle he had gotten from Zion and later repaired to prime condition, and the Hectre II Anti-Material Rifle. All three had been modified to be able to grip the weapons with his deathclaw arm without interference in weapon operation. When neccessary, some parts were reworked so they could be used lefthanded with comfort. The last two of the three weapons were temporarily broken down to fit in the duffel for transport. The Courier also picked up a small gunbox to put the Transportalponder to limit the ability for damage to be done to the device.

As for the rest of his supplies, he tossed in a good measure of food, ammo, cartridges, and stimpaks to last him for a fair amount of time, luck holding. A few chems, a Stealth-Boy and couple nuka-gernades were carefully added to the supply count with a few flashbangs and couple bars of gold he had managed to salvage. These bars were not from the Sierra Madre. Those he wasn't going to let go of at all. After putting a couple throwing knives in the lining of his coat, the Courier slung the duffel over his back and the 12.7mm SMG in a position it could be easily drawn.

With his supplies sorted out, the Courier activated the Transportalponder and began mentally counting the seconds til it activated. When his count reached thirty, he felt the device activate and send him to the probe's unknown landing site.

* * *

 **Here's the first chapter of the rewrite of the Aged Warrior. Better? Worse? Screw something up severely? Please inform me if the answer to any of these questions is yes.**


	2. Chapter 2

Upon arrival at the destination, the Courier stumbled from the uneven ground. Taking a look at his surroundings, the Courier found himself in a crater, likely caused by the removal of the Big MT probe. Climbing out of the pit, the Courier took a look at the rest of his surroundings and took note of the large amount of blood red vegetation surrounding his person. ' _There being vegetation was unexpected_ _. Hopefully I can find someone to tell me where I am._ '

The Courier stored the Transportalponder in its case and spared a few seconds of thought as to whether to climb one of the trees to get a better view of his surroundings. The idea was shot down after he recalled the few times he had tried climbing in the past. With the exception of ladders, none of the attempts generally didn't ended too well for him. Considering his standard operating area was the Mojave Wasteland, such ineptitude was to be expected. Climbing up hills and cliffs only made you a target for snipers when you got to the top, and trees had a tendency to not exist.

Shaking his head to clear away his thoughts, the Courier glanced down at his Pipboy. Aligning himself with where it said east was, the Courier began to walk off in the direction. Prior experience had shown that he would run into something of interest eventually. After an hour of walking, he heard something rustling within the trees surrounding him. Drawing Lil' Devil, he looked around his position slowly and listened intently for any noise. For a second there was silence, then six creatures came out of the surrounding vegetation and surrounded him.

As he focused on each of them, waiting for the first to make their move, he absorbed as much detail of his assailants as he could. He noted the beasts were similar to the Yao Guai, but there were a few differences in their appearance. The Courier's mind skipped over the fur and eyes, as those were of little importance, to note the facial plating and several spiked protrusions across its body made of a substance that appeared to be bone. With the aid of his replacement right eye, he saw that below the upper, solid layer of the plating, there seemed to be a semipermeable structure that would be able to absorb strong impacts. Most of the Yao Guai variants had what would be a very weak layer, but one in particular had one to the point where it could potentially be bulletproof. As it had the greatest size, the Courier marked it as the main threat and put a majority of his attention upon it, not entirely leaving the rest though.

The largest of the variants shifted to a stance akin to that of a Deathclaw as the Courier drew his Sequoia. He might be able to be victorious without it, but unknown enemies always proved to be a pain to deal with. Of course, what occurred next was unexpected. The largest variant gave a small, almost imperceptible sniff of the air, and the Courier noted something seemed to change in its stance. While he wasn't entirely certain, the Courier could have sworn the former desire to hunt had been overwritten by surprise and curiosity.

The Courier noted variant's eyes seemed to bore into him for a second, seeming to, for lack of a better word, stare into his soul. It's next action perplexed the Courier even further. It was almost as if it bowed in submissiveness. ' _What the fuck..._ '

Distracted as he was, the Courier missed that one of the creatures, likely a younger one, made the attempt to attack him. If it had managed to reach him, it likely would have dealt a large amount of damage to him. However, the large variant noticed the attempted attack and, rather than joining in on it, intercepted the young variant, knocking it back. The Courier rapidly regained his senses and cursed under his breath at loosing his focus of the current situation.

The large creature turned to face him for a second, before giving what could only really be described as an order. The pack was led off by the large Yao Guai-variant, leaving behind a quite confused Courier. ' _So that was...something,_ ' the Courier thought. ' _Is that what sentients look like here or am I missing something critical? Or maybe I have something its prey doesn't? Not really going to be finding anything out here, though._ '

Turning his attention to his Pipboy, the Courier realigned himself with its east and continued onwards, holstering the Sequoia but keeping himself armed with Lil' Devil. He made a slower pace after the incident, as he was continually focused on tracking if the pack would come back, or another would come along. Occasionally he would detect something at the edge of his perception, but when he paused to home in on it, it would be gone. It decreased as he went along, eventually fading to nothing, but the Courier never let down his guard. Roughly two hours after his contact with the pack, he came across another individual.

The individual in question was a black haired teenaged girl seated upon a rock within the center of a clearing. The Courier spoke up to get her attention, "Do you speak English?" ' _Shot in the dark, but then anything I try would be._ '

The female jumped at the interruption of her thoughts and went for her weapon. The Courier raised his hands away from his side to demonstrate non-hostile intent. "Don't speak English? Qué hay de español? Deutsche? Zhōngwén?"

The female looked at him confused, befor asking, "Do you mean Vytalian?"

"Sure let's go with that," he replied, both mentally thanking and cursing the universe for the language being the same. It would prove useful for communication, but the sheer odds against such an event occurring did not sit well with him. "Would you kindly tell me where I am?"

"How do you not know where you are?" she asked suspiciously.

"It is a very long, confusing explanation based upon several extremely long and complex equations and a high level of understanding of many scientific principles. At least, that's how it would be if the creators weren't insane and had just as high a chance of falling into something that worked as discovering the principles behind it," the Courier stated. "Shorthand, I was effectively randomly teleported here and have no idea where I ended up."

"Most people would say they got lost," the female replied.

"I've got four, four and a half years left to live," the Courier commented. "I don't care about hiding stuff anymore. As for the answer to my question..."

"You're in the Forever Fall forest, north of Vale."

"Never heard of either of those before, but I doubt you would have heard of the Mojave and New Vegas either. If you're staying out here, keep an eye out for some strange Yao Guai variant. The pack left me alone, but I don't know how they'll react to you," the Courier responded, to her strange shock. "We may meet later, may not. I really don't care. Farewell."

Leaving her behind, the Courier headed off in the indicated direction, leaving behind the thoroughly shocked individual. Over the next few hours of travel, the sounds from earlier returned at relatively arbitrary times. Eventually his southward travel brought him to a massive wall. Looking back and forth along the colossal structure that stretched far into the distance, he had one thought. ' _How the fuck am I going to get past this?_ '

* * *

 **There is a particular reason why the Courier was ignored by the Grimm. Not going to mention it here as it cannot be hidden from those who want to not know it, but it the mystery confuses/pisses you off enough, then send me a private message and I will explain. For those who don't have an account here, I'm going to put it up in a spoiler on the Space Battles thread.**


	3. Chapter 3

The branch he put his weight on snapped and the Courier fell a short distance to the ground, managing to catch himself on a lower branch. Muttering a curse under his breath, he questioned why he was attempting to do this. 'Oh right, the only other damn way in I've managed to find is to swim in the ocean an unknown distance,' he thought as he continued to climb towards the elevated rail that had an entrance through the wall. Admittedly, that entrance was a sealed door, but the Courier hoped to be able to find a maintenance door or something.

' _Why the hell do they even need a wall this large anyway?_ ' the Courier continued as he ascended the tree that was relatively the closest to the rails. ' _Defense? Against what? There are a numerous other ways far cheaper to defend against another nation, and I haven't seen any wildlife out here anywhere that would justify this. Sure, there were those Yao Guai lookalikes but New Cal' hasn't had to build something like this and we deal with fucking Deathclaws. Maybe there's something bigger out there I haven't seen yet..._ '

When the Courier became level with the elevated rail, he heard a slight hum. He was confused for a second, before recognizing the sound. 'Rails must be electrified. Better be careful where I land.'

After testing a branch that was the closest to the rail line, the Courier ran along it. He heard the branch strain and lept to the elevated line as the branch snapped. He narrowly gripped the edge of the platform with his right arm and carefully proceeded to haul himself up, careful not to touch anything metal. The electricity could accidentally set off some of his bullets or custom explosives by accident.

The Courier slowly walked along the tracks, careful not to come into any contact with the rails humming with electricity and came to the wall after a relatively short period of time. Walking along the doorway, he found a small, fairly broken platform off to one side. Walking onto it, the Courier found a door with a old keypad heading into the wall. ' _Maybe it's for maintenance? Whatever, let's crack it open._ '

The internals were a bit more advanced than what he had seen within the Wasteland, but not to a massive degree. The keypad was unpowered, but use of the battery within his helmet's light solved that problem. After a few minutes of work, the Courier managed to get the door to unlock. Just before entering, the Courier put on the Stealth Boy, as a just in case measure, and replaced the battery of his helmet's light.

A quick look inside caused the Courier to judge that while it had been used recently, but was likely not a regular route. The Courier activated his helmet's light and closed the door behind him, resolving to just use a Nuka grenade if he needed to go back through there and nothing inside worked. He made his way down the short corridor, and, when arriving at the door, turned off the helmet's light. Carefully opening the door and seeing it was dark, the Courier reactivated his helmet light and entered the room.

He found himself within what he guessed to be a customs office of a sorts, though long abandoned. The room had some windows on the rail side, and, upon looking through them, the Courier noted that they looked into the passage through the wall, the large doors to either side. A search of the office turned up nothing immediately useful, but allowed him to deduce that this had likely been here before the rails were constructed.

' _Just how old is this wall?_ ' the Courier thought as he finished his search of the area. ' _And was this place build during its construction or after? Furthermore, did that elevated rail exist before the rails? Geh, not going to get any answers sticking around here..._ '

The Courier continued through the door on the opposing side of the one he entered through. The corridor on the other side was slightly shorter than the former passage, but not by much. After shutting off his helmet's light, he opened the door that would open out to the other side of the wall. After properly adjusting to the dark, the Courier found the platform had fallen away on this side, but off to the side there was a ladder that reached most of the way to the ground. While he might be able to reach it, the Courier decided to save the descent for when the sun was beginning to rise rather than in the dead of night. Besides the low level of vision, he was starting to get a bit tired, and he believed his allotment of luck for the day was getting low.

Returning to the office, the Courier set his duffel bag against the wall and sat down next to it. The Courier logged the events of the day in his Pipboy so he could provide the Think Tank back home with a record of events that occurred during his time. After that, he set the timer for the Pipboy to wake him in a few hours and let sleep take ahold of him.

* * *

 **This one is a bit of a short chapter, but you underestimate how many times I had to restart in order to get an idea of exactly how to get the Courier inside the walls without needing him to run into either Ozpin's or Cinder's factions. You may be wondering why. Well, I wound up having a few different paths the story could go down, and asked someone on Spacebattles to pick a number to see which would be utilized. Wound up with one of the Wild Card (ie. not initially allying with Ozpin or Cinder) routes. Whether he will remain unallied to either faction may change further down the line, but for now the Courier will forge his own path.**


	4. Chapter 4

The Courier awoke several hours later. He jumped to a ready position and drew both pistols before remembering what had happened the prior day. Holstering Lil' Devil and his Sequoia, he shifted his focus to composing a list of what he would need to get done. ' _Going to need information, money, and a place to stay. Society seems prewar, so possibly need to fake an identity as well. That's...actually something I haven't really had to do before. Operating systems will probably be quite different, so my hacking experience is effectively shot to hell for anything beyond the basics...though that would likely mean my Pipboy is secure against their actions as well..._ '

He shook his head before continuing, ' _Back on topic. Could sell off the gold, but lugging around multiple thirty-five pound bars would only make me a target for pickpockets. I know enough that I could likely counter any attempt, maybe even perform a counter at the same instant. Not like I could leave the stuff up here, anyway. Someone may have seen me last night and even if not, it would be highly suspicious to come back here afterwards. Especially since I would need to pick up a ladder as well.'_

The Courier removed his Elite Riot Gear helmet and stroked his chin with his left hand. ' _Housing will likely come fairly easily after the money. Get to a less than scrupulous part of town and pay in cash, I should be able to get ahold of something I could use. A motel of sorts could hold me over til I find an actual apartment. Will have to be careful in what I leave behind though. As for information, the society is akin to prewar. Might be a library I could use, or at least I should be able to find a book store of some kind. Granted, all this thinking is moot if they decide to report me due to my appearance. Doubt a...however the hell you would label how Rawr's arm is attached and the camera eye would bring about the most favorable of responses. Can't really get away going full Riot Gear here like I could in the wastes. Let's see what I have._ '

A quick lookover of the supplies he had gathered resulted in him rapidly running across on the suit and trenchcoat outfit he referred to as his 'Mysterious Stranger' outfit. It wasn't what belonged to that individual, but with exception of holding a darker shade, it held quite a few similarities from the outside. The inside was heavily modified to be able to carry a large number of items with him. After putting it on with the vest of the Courier's duster underneath for a bit of protection and beating an old pre-war hat into shape, the Courier made the curious attempt to try and see how much he could affix to the inside of the unbuttoned trenchcoat. The amount proved to be a bit more than the Elite Riot Gear, but all that really meant was that he had a couple more chems rapidly available on-hand. ' _Not enough to toss out the duffel. Was worth a shot at least._ '

Grabbing a pair of Lucky Sunglasses, the Courier slung the zipped up duffel over his shoulders and proceeded inside the wall. Slowly opening the door, he noted that there wasn't anyone around the area. Putting on the Lucky Sunglasses to both hide the camera eye and to reduce glare, the Courier opened the door fully and began to descend down the ladder carefully. The bottom of the ladder, or at least, the bottom of how far he trusted the ladder, was a couple meters off the ground, but coming out...able to move from worse falls led the Courier to jump off without fear. His hat fell off his head as he dropped, but it leisurely fell near enough to him to catch it and put it back on his head. Looking up, he noted that he had forgotten to close the door to the old area behind him. ' _Ah well. Can't get back up there now,_ ' he thought as he turned away and walked into the city.

With the daylight as it now was, the Courier was able to get a far better look of the city. Even though the area he was in seemed to be partially run down, something was nagging at his mind for a few seconds before he recognized what it was. The city was too clean. Not that it was a bad thing, but the complete and utter lack of sand, dust, fallout, and the rest of the stuff that had essentially become a part of everything in the wasteland was triggering something within his mind that this place shouldn't exist. Hell, he had been to Vault City and even the best portions of that seemed to pale before the appearance held by the rundown portions of this city. ' _This is going to take some getting used to..._ '

* * *

 **This one is a bit on the short side, but I wanted to at least get something out after this length of time without an update from me. With the new information provided by canon RWBY, I wonder if the side the Courier will be making will be considered as being three, four, or an even greater number?** **All I know is, I might be needing to step things up a bit from what is planned to keep him competitive...**


	5. Questions and Delay Notice

**Yeah, Author's note rather than a chapter. Couple things are hanging me up from being able to fully write up the story, primarily the amount of work I have to do in College. Another thing is the fact I want to be able to get a few chapters ahead of what is posted so I can figure out where I am really going with everything and make things a bit more coherent. Final point, I have a couple questions I want answered.**

 **1) Roughly how tall is the Courier?**

 **2) Roughly how powerful would a Hunter get if they were augmented with the Forced Evolutionary Virus then further augmented with both Big MT improved organs, a hybrid of Power Armor and an Atlesian Paladin, the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, and a gatling weapon made by combining Fallout and Remnant tech?**

 **Only those two for now. Might have a couple more at the end of chapters in the future.**


End file.
